Warrior
by vibranium
Summary: Darcy is haunted by her family's rejection; she doesn't need the world to fall apart around her to lose control, fast. Trigger warning: eating disorder/other mental health themes; suicide themes
1. Prologue

Hello, My Name Is.

It goes like that.

Hello, my name is Darcy and I'm a recovering anorexic.

Darcy keeps her arms crossed at all times. She gained back half the weight she lost at college within a week at the hospital. Such is life when a doctor insists on 3,000 calories a day. She cooperates to gain the benefit of leaving her room every so often. She makes friends with the other girls. They nod to each other with in a sick comradeship. Group therapy is bullshit.

Darcy knew chaos before The Avengers, before Thor. Before even leaving for college, she knew the feeling of being trapped somewhere, and it wasn't just inside her own head.

She seemed indifferent to her family. But she'd never let them know, that it was their fault. They started it when she had to spend every second of her life begging for her right to exist.

She knew what it was like to love someone who didn't give a shit about her, someone who didn't care if she was alive or not. She didn't need someone to ever play the bad guy because they'd always been there.

She knew love unrequited turned into a tangle wrapping up inside her, only to be tucked away so as not to make innocent bystanders uncomfortable. Scar tissue.

She didn't need Bruce to know hate.


	2. Chapter 1

Darcy can't pinpoint when it all started. There are multiple origins.

Eating dinner with her parents; being told to finish her plate or she'd get smacked by her father and her mother would be sad. Food was on her plate and she should be thankful for it, her father yelled, pointing his fork at her. Finish it or you don't get to leave the table.

Use table manners or be put outside and eat like an animal.

Her mother never shut up about baby weight that remained after Darcy was born, as if carrying her for nine months hadn't been enough already. She didn't outright blame Darcy, but neither did she deny her any responsibility. Darcy's mom would grumble in changing rooms at the mall, Darcy sitting on her floor watching her mother sulking over her once flat, now and forever soft stomach.

Her mother said no to some foods and Darcy's father told her she was being stupid.

Darcy could blame magazines or the other girls at school, but that didn't seem fair somehow. She could eat with friends and sometimes feel guilty, but the voices didn't start until she was in college.

-

Darcy flung herself into her education. She was left to her own devices, so her eating patterns were scattered and she often ran on only a couple hours' sleep a day.

With everything going so well, the sudden pangs of anxiety were all the more overwhelming, clutching at her insides and making her stay indoors with the covers up to her chin for hours. The tears would dry and Darcy would pick up where she'd left off.

At least, it worked that way for a while.

Her roommate had a party with beer and boys. Lots of her girlfriends flooded in with giggles and sparkles. Darcy was suddenly aware of her scruffy clothes, her scuffed shoes, the fact that her hair never did anything she wanted it to, no matter what.

They all just seemed slinkier and brighter than her.

The next day when everyone had left, Darcy showered, her whole body aching. She towelled off and saw someone new in the mirror when she wiped away the condensation.

_Do you think those people actually like you? _

Darcy stared at the girl that looked back at her.__

They just feel sorry for you.

-

_Jesus, is that me?_

Of course. What did you fucking expect?

Darcy did a double-take at a photo of herself online. She'd been tagged in several on Facebook and resented the uploader.

It became not about losing weight, but instead just not eating. It wasn't that difficult.

With college Darcy was able to kill time chugging coffee and bumming cigarettes in between studying and classes. Each day just became a waiting game. Waiting off the time until she could return to her bed, even if it was just to lie there and fret.

She couldn't handle more than just one meal a day without completing losing it. She knew it wasn't safe, especially after she passed out a couple times at parties, really just falling over at the most inconvenient times. Despite working so hard on her body, it was still capable of embarrassment.

She had to run away when her roommate called her parents about her weight. The 'episodes', the word her mother used to describe her fainting, was 'alarming'.

Darcy returned to New York, her home, to be taken to hospital, hysterical and screaming about her finals.

She didn't have time for this.

_What a supreme fuck-up you are._

Darcy had a tube up her nose for sometime, missing out on six college credits.

So she ran away to New Mexico to make it up.


	3. Chapter 2

Darcy lives uninterrupted for months on end in New Mexico. It doesn't last.

Jane is called away suddenly and Darcy moves back home, once again under the thumb of her father, even though she moved out to her own crappy cereal box-worth of space in the Upper West Side.

She's struggling to pull on a skirt that she knew was perfectly baggy around her hips while she was in college. She chugs her coffee, frowning at her watch and stuffing her satchel with a copy of her resume and her keys.

Finally finding her glasses case, her cell phone rings and she groans. She knows who is calling without having to check.

"Hey, Dad," she attempts a bright voice while searching for her patent black pumps amongst the mess of empty noodle boxes on the kitchen counter. The kitchen is also the living room, and her office combined.

"So I'm thinking about your options, Darcy. I've been the one to bail you out every time -"

"Which I appreciate."

Each time she'd changed her major, her father would fight with her and then relent. When she became ill six months ago, her father paid for that, too.

"I don't want you mooching around the city any more. If you don't change things within a month, you'll get nothing from me."

Darcy froze, gripping her phone so hard she was sure it would crack. Without her father's tiny contribution, she'd never be able to afford her own place. She'd have to move back home.

Darcy couldn't think of anything worse when she'd been living away from her parents for years.

"Dad," she said, edging on desperate, "I have a job interview in...twenty minutes and I'm running late. Please. Can we talk about this later?"

Darcy hung up, knowing her father would make her pay for that later. He had been scathing when she suggested changing to an English Literature major two years ago. He was horrified that she'd completed her degree in Political Science. He didn't see it as useful at all.

Darcy's grandfather had worked in a coal mine after being in the Marines. Darcy's own father had clawed his way through law school, and her mother's family lost everything during The Depression. Darcy's parents were extremely self-conscious of their socio-economic status, and how far they'd both come.

According to Darcy's father, she was an ungrateful, lazy daughter by comparison alone. She'd been born well-off because her parents had worked so hard for her.

Darcy bit her lip before hurrying out of her apartment.

-

The job interview was her birthday present, Jane said in an email. Jane convinced Tony Stark to consider Darcy as a new assistant for the Avengers Tower. Jane added she'd probably buy her a Norwegian snowglobe, if they had those there.

Darcy missed knowing anyone around her any more. At least at the hospital there were all the other sick girls who always looked out for her, even if it just meant patting her on the back for having finished a blueberry muffin.

Darcy vaguely knew what Tony Stark was like. She read Perez Hilton and other stuff like that. Not too long ago magazines served as examples of her ideal body shape. The women whose thighs she wanted were usually spotted by Stark's side, one way or another.

It made her nervous to think that his time was spent with people who looked like that.

-

She got the job. By some miracle.

"Can you start tomorrow?"

That's what Tony had said – he insisted Mr. Stark felt too much like SHIELD to him, and Darcy wasn't from SHIELD. She just knew Jane and Thor. She'd stumbled into this little superhero mess.

Darcy hadn't had a cigarette in six months, but the pent up anxiety from the interview had taken its toll. The second she was in the street again outside Avengers Tower, she spotted a group of young men huddled together near a basketball court, smoking.

She approach the friendliest-looking one and gestured holding a cigarette.

"You got a smoke? And a light?"

His own light dangled from his lips. Darcy could hear the house music screeching in his headphones that hung around his neck. He smirked a little at her and Darcy felt uneasy.

"Thank you," she said as he handed her the prize, and held a Zippo alight for her.

"Thank you," Darcy said again, and he smirked.

"'Thank you, thank you'?" he sneered. Darcy stared at him and gave a nervous chuckled.

"I'm just being polite."

It was probably the sheer number of eyes on her that were making her uncomfortable. She couldn't help feel like she was being compared to a piece of meat by the sheer amount of collective leering.

Darcy took a single drag before turning away, exhaling roughly through her nostrils. Her eyes began to water from the smoke.

"Who was that fat chick you were talking to?"

Darcy played it over again in her head as she crossed the street, not looking back at the men.

_Fat. FAT._

_You're back where you started._

_Too fucking fat._

Darcy had to cover her mouth with her free hand to muffle her wailing as she jogged towards the subway, and home.


	4. Chapter 3

Darcy walked straight to the 7-Eleven a street over from her apartment when she got off at her stop.  
She didn't slow her pace, even when she walked behind an elderly couple, their slow pace hitting Darcy with such irritation that she huffed and overtook them, readjusting the strap of her satchel. She ignored the cashier's face (he'd begun to recognise her by now, and sometimes smiled at her shyly) and went straight to the refrigerators at the back of the store and grabbed four cans of Diet Coke.

She stalked home and threw her satchel to the floor as she shut her front door behind her, placing the plastic bag on the counter and going straight to the bathroom to find her scales.

Darcy hadn't weighed herself in months. She'd tried distracting herself from calculating her numerical value (that was what it felt like in the hospital – she meant less the less she weighed, and the more she weighed, the more she was a human being and not a nuisance) for months, so once she retrieved the scale from under the bathroom sink, Darcy swept away the dust with her hand.

She took off her shoes, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the scales. She didn't like what she saw. She was over 130lbs. That made her over 30lbs heavier than she was when she was in the hospital, and over 10lbs heavier than when she was discharged. Darcy didn't know how to feel. She just knew that this was the beginning of a different life. She was going to change forever.

No more of this, ever again.

Waking up at eight the following morning was excruciating since Darcy hadn't eaten dinner, and just chugged Diet Coke after Diet Coke and ignored her rumbling stomach, waking up at 3am with a full bladder.

She planned to eat the tinniest amount possible that day, opting for just a cup of black coffee for breakfast. The morning rush for work was forty-five minutes, just as Darcy estimated. She arrived on Tony's floor in the Avengers Tower with two take-away coffees, both for her new boss.

He seemed to jump out of nowhere, clad in scruffy jeans and a fitted black t-shirt, the reactor light visible from beneath the fabric.

"Ah!"

"Hello there, Miss Lewis," Tony said, entirely missing her shock as he took the coffee from her and set it aside at the sleek black desk Darcy figured was her new workspace. Tony sipped his coffee and smacked his lips, doing a double-take.

"Nice bangle," he said, and Darcy didn't know if he was making fun of her or being genuine. It was gunmetal with a metallic edge. She noticed how it fit snugly around her wrist when a few months before it hung around her delicate wrists.

Emaciated, sure. But that wasn't the point. Darcy's physical changes were all the more obvious to her now that she knew her weight.

"Thanks," she replied, unsure. "You seem...wired. You sure you need the coffee, boss?"

Tony took another sip as Darcy just stood there, watching. She hadn't even put her bag down.

"Oh, I haven't been to bed."

He said it casually. Darcy realised he must have become hyper from being tired. She made a mental note in case he was like this again (he was, all too often).

"What?"

Tony walked off, leaving Darcy standing there next to her desk, staring after him.

Darcy began to feel light-headed within a couple hours. It was the carb cravings she knew all too well. Her stomach rumbled at around ten-thirty when she finally hung up the phone with Pepper Potts in Malibu.

_No. You won't be feeding it. Not yet. Wait._

She sighed, annoyed to be reminded of her body when she was trying to work. Pepper had seemed very grateful for Darcy starting work at such short notice. She explained some things Darcy didn't know from the articles she read about Tony, like the fact that he despised paperwork, meetings, and being handed anything directly.

"What, is it like court etiquette?" Darcy joked.

Pepper didn't laugh. "He doesn't like germs."

Darcy couldn't think of anyone who _did_, but she understood. She had her own habits other people found weird – hello, fasting for days on end – so she just nodded, but then remembered Pepper couldn't see her.

"Right. No, I get it."

When she hung up and her stomach rumbled, she decided to visit the workshop.

Darcy exited the elevator and nearly bumped into a man with the SHIELD logo on the shoulder of his jacket. He had dead eyes.

"Sorry," Darcy mumbled, side-stepping him and retreating, but the guy didn't move from his spot in front of the elevator doors.

"Darcy, right?" he called after her, and Darcy stopped mid-step and turned back.

"Uh, yeah. And you are?"

"Agent Barton."

He looked her up and down, and Darcy felt her cheeks burn. He was probably taking in her chunky calves, her only decent skirt (the same one from yesterday) that strained across her thighs, and her sausage arms that poked out from her cream blouse with short puffy sleeves.

Darcy narrowed her eyes at him. "I saw you on TV, right?"

"Probably," he said. He sounded kind of grumpy.

The elevator doors opened and he left Darcy in the corridor without another word.

"Uh, bye," she called, giving a sarcastic wave.

Darcy met the other Avengers in the conference room that afternoon. She had skipped lunch, so she already felt tested by the universe when she dragged Tony from his workshop. They still managed to be fifteen minutes late.

Darcy sat at in a chair closest to the exit, weary of all the new faces that turned to her when she and Tony finally arrived.

"Thanks for joining us, Stark."

Director Fury's eyebrows raised at them both. Darcy averted her gaze to her feet while Tony smirked, slouching beside her.

Darcy tapped her pen on her open binder, looking around her. Thor wasn't there, to her dismay. She missed that guy. She hoped to see a familiar face.

Agent Barton was there again, standing with a red-haired woman at his right, arms folded. She was slightly taller than Darcy, wearing dark jeans and an orange shirt under a caramel leather jacket. Darcy recognised her as the only female Avenger, the Black Widow.

Her thighs were perfect. Darcy felt ashamed that that was one of the first things she noticed, and not the fact that Fury had asked her a question.

"Lewis?" he barked, prompting her.

"Yes. Hi," she babbled, gaze swivelling back to him. "What was the question?"

"I was welcoming you to the team."

"Oh!" Darcy felt herself smile for the first time that day. "Thanks, but I wouldn't say I'm part of the superhero squad."

There was an awkward pause, and the guy Darcy knew was Captain America scratched the back of his head. Coming from an outsider's perspective, she couldn't think of what else to call them.

"Well, Natasha and I aren't superheroes," piped up Barton, and Darcy felt her cheeks burn again. "We're Special Ops."

"Yeah, and apparently that guy-" Tony pointed to Captain America. "- is_ just a kid from Brooklyn._"

Captain America rolled his eyes and Darcy felt her lips twitch into a small smile. Tony shrugged.

"And I'm not exactly a hero, either," said a guy by the window, furthest away from everyone. Darcy found herself staring, since something in her brain clicked and he seemed oddly familiar to her.

She scoured her brain for a guy with dark, curly hair with spectacles and couldn't find anything. She was sure she would have remembered him. She felt her stomach clench. Oh, shit – she hadn't met him in some bar and then blotted out the memories with too many vodka sodas?

Tony rolled his eyes this time. He leaned forward and nudged Darcy in the ribs.

"Dr. Banner," Tony indicated. "But you probably saw his alter ego on TV. Or maybe his action figure when you were last at Target. Hulk smash!"

Banner flushed, making brief eye contact with Darcy before looking at Fury pointedly, rubbing his hands together self-consciously. "Uh, was there any reason for this pow-wow, or-?"

"I didn't call this meeting. It was entirely Stark's idea," Fury snapped.

Tony grinned. "You had to meet the kid sooner or later."

Darcy didn't know what she despised more: the fact that Tony had made them late to his own meeting or that he referred to her as 'the kid'. She was twenty-three, and at this point feeling more like a babysitter than an assistant.

Everyone's eyes were back on Darcy. She cleared her throat.

"I'm guessing Thor's not here since he already knows me."

"You know Thor?"

Banner was looking at her more intently this time. Darcy smiled again, feeling the ice slowly breaking away and the nervous fluttering in her belly disappearing.

"Yeah! I was working for Jane Foster when Thor showed up."

"She tasered him," Tony added, and Barton laughed as Natasha raised an eyebrow.

There was more anecdote-swapping and general chatting before Fury lost his patience and didn't bother to be polite about it.

Natasha and Barton regarded Darcy (with a nod and a wink respectively) before they departed soon after. Darcy felt a surge of pride.

"It's great to have you on-board, ma'am."

"Darcy," she insisted, shaking Captain America's hand. His exceptional charm made him seem the more genuine, and he was easy on the eyes. "Please call me Darcy."

The Captain gave a nod and left. Darcy noticed Banner still looking at her in the corner of her eye. She pretended to be occupied with her binder as Tony waited impatiently by the doorway. She was surprised he bothered to wait at all.

"Have...have we met before?" Banner asked, and Darcy looked up at him.

"That's one hell of a line, Bruce," Tony said, leaning and watching it play out.

Darcy shot him a look. Surely he could find his way back to his own quarters. Tony took the hint and raised his hands, backing out of the room.

Darcy didn't answer Bruce's question until she heard the distinctive ding of the elevator and Tony's whistling fade as he left the floor.

"Uh, I don't know. I'm sorry I we have and I've just forgotten. Especially if it was when I was at Culver."

Bruce smiled. "Actually, it was at a hospital, but I didn't know you went to Culver."

Darcy felt her heart jump into her throat. If he was a doctor and knew her at a hospital, he'd know why she was there in the first place. She wasn't prepared for her new employers to know about being mentally unsound not too long ago.

She didn't want them to look at her body and try to find the damage that was no longer there.

_You got fat._

Darcy ignored the voice, opening her mouth but struggling to think of what to say. The panic must have shown on her face.

"It's okay," Bruce added hastily, concerned. "You never said why you were there. You seemed a little buzzed, though."

He ran his fingers through his already unruly hair and Darcy knew she was staring. He was endearing.

And then she remembered.

It was a week into her hospital stint and she was on a cigarette break. She was only allowed four a day, which meant she could also venture outside to smoke.

It was welcome after hours of group therapy and painting her shitty feelings in watercolours. The habit of wearing baggy clothing was hard to break, so Darcy ventured out into the cool afternoon with her Zippo lighter and her hair a tangled mess at her waist.

She shuffled to the side of the entrance where the other smokers loitered, giving a fellow patient from her ward a small nod. She didn't know the girl's name but she had the same spaced-out expression on her face Darcy was sure she had.

It wasn't the jutting bones and frail limbs that made anorexics so easy to spot. It was the isolation in their eyes. Perpetual sulking. Zombie eyes.

Darcy lit up and took a drag, leaning against a wall, before she spotted Bruce staring at the tiniest sliver of skin that showed between her sweat pants and her oversized t-shirt. She jutted her chin at me.

"What, did I cut myself shaving? You going to tell me smoking is bad for me?"

"I'm supposed to tell you stuff like that," he replied, pen paused on his piece of paper. "I'm a doctor."

"Well..." Darcy let her sentence fade into the air like the blue-grey smoke that emitted from her nostrils. "Hang on, there's no way you're a doctor."

Bruce looked at her like he didn't know what to say. "Uh...why do you say that?"

Darcy shrugged again. "The people who work here don't look anything like those fakers from Grey's Anatomy. You seem to stick out, is all."

He chuckled, somewhat bitterly. Darcy frowned at his disdain.

"I don't mean to stick out, usually."

Several minutes passed as Darcy smoked her way through her two cigarettes, mashing the butts on the wall as Bruce continued to busy himself with whatever he was scrawling on.

He was frowning with concentration and Darcy wanted to lean closer to him and stroke the tuft of curly hair that made up his sideburns. There were some silvery hairs she didn't notice the first time she looked him over.

"Darcy," she offered her hand to him under his nose, and he was forced to look up from his paper and gave a small smile.

He took her hand, giving it the slightest shake. "Darcy."

"Aren't you going to tell me your name, Doc?"

He shook his head, still smiling. "Probably not."

"Well, I'll see you around, anyway."

Darcy left him, looking back for a brief moment to see him staring straight back at her. She took a deep breath and walked back inside.

Darcy didn't see him again. Not until just then in the conference room.


	5. Chapter 4

Darcy woke with a massive headache. Actually, everything ached. Her vision wasn't too good either, but that didn't stop her from recognising the source of the voice.

"Wakey wakey, hands off snakey!"

Darcy screamed when she met a large pair of brown eyes – Tony's eyes – just above her bed.

"_What the fuck_, Tony?"

Darcy hurled a pillow and he just laughed.

"Hey, I buzzed you like, four times. You really overdid it, huh, kiddo?"

Tony smirked and sat on the edge of her bed and Darcy tried to sit up, drawing her knees up rubbing her forehead.  
Tony was referring to last night, when he decided to take Darcy, Pepper and Bruce out for dinner to celebrate the one month anniversary of Darcy being his assistant. It took Bruce some convincing to agree to actually show up, as it was obvious to Darcy from day one that he didn't like human interaction.

They went to a Japanese restaurant, mostly just because Tony wanted sake. They sat at a small round table by a back window, waiting for Bruce.

"He's coming, right?" Darcy asked Pepper, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. She didn't want them knowing too much about how she felt about Bruce.

She definitely had a crush on him. Every day she saw him at least once because Bruce worked in the labs downstairs from Tony's shop and Tony always seemed to make an excuse to stop by and annoy Bruce. Darcy would go looking for Tony and find him usually hovering around when Bruce was trying to concentrate.

Darcy would give Bruce this apologetic half smile and eventually drag Tony away (physically, by the back of the shirt), and she'd try not to think about how Bruce's chest hair peaked through his shirts. She'd bite her lip and avert her eyes and pretend the lab was boring.

She couldn't pretend for long, since she'd spent so much time in New Mexico with Jane and Erik. Although she mostly didn't understand whatever the hell it was they were researching, it was fascinating and so different from anything else Darcy had experienced.

Also, she knew Bruce from Culver, or at least, rumours of one of his experiments going awry whilst at Culver. Not everyone from Culver knew the gamma radiation from that particular project had made Dr. Banner into the Hulk.

"Yeah, if he can drag himself away from that breakthrough of his," Tony answered, thoroughly bored. Pepper gave him a look and Tony shrugged.

"He doesn't have a girlfriend, I'm guessing," Darcy said, and she was curious. In fact, dying to know whether she had any chance at all. Though she didn't. But she'd like to.

But she didn't.

Tony rose an eyebrow, suddenly interested. "Well."  
"I don't mean it like _that_," Darcy said. (Though she did.) "I just mean if he's spending too much time at Stark Tower he can't possibly have..."

Darcy looked away, smoothing the tablecloth.

"You don't know about Betty, do you?" Pepper asked, and Darcy blushed, determined to not look at anyone in the eye. She knew she had a terrible poker face.

"I...I know about there being a Betty, but I don't know Betty. We don't have to talk about this now."

"What, about Betty?" Tony scoffed. "That is long over. She was at Culver when he first turned into the Hulk. She had a personal connection with the General after him when he was on the run in Brazil."

Tony looked at Darcy pointedly. She frowned.

"Her father, Darcy. General Ross is Betty Ross' _father_."

"So her dad was the reason they broke up?"

"It's not as lame as that. It's worse. Banner was sure he'd hurt Betty so he fled to Calcutta after this incident in Harlem. Go ahead and ask JARVIS sometime to get you the SHIELD files on that, because it's an interesting read."

"Tony," Pepper sighed.

"He keeps his distance from people know because he thinks he's a monster, but I didn't get my ticket for the pity train," Tony added.

"So The Avengers is why he came back to New York? But you're not even going on missions, right now -"

"It was the Tesseract and Fury needing Banner to find it that got him back from Calcutta, but he stayed in New York for the labs. He's trying to find a way to understand gamma radiation even beyond what he discovered at Culver."

"I get the feeling that you're discussing something classified, Tony," Darcy said.

"What's classified?"

Darcy looked up and saw Bruce by her side, his hand on the back of her chair.

"Nothing," she babbled, and Bruce took the chair beside hers. She looked at Pepper and felt herself blushing. She just hoped that no-one else noticed.

"What took you, man? We're ordering." Tony clicked his fingers at a waiter nearby who came over quickly.

"Yes, Mr. Stark?"

"Sashimi. And sake."

"I'm not drinking," Bruce said automatically. "I'll just have water."

"It's not a Japanese restaurant if you don't have sake, Bruce," Tony argued, and Darcy smirked.

The waiter came back with their food and drinks, kindly offering Bruce the water he wanted, and the four of them ate and talked happily, Darcy occasionally bumping Bruce's knee every now and again by accident. Or on purpose. Probably on purpose.

Darcy didn't try to think about eating the food too much. She'd been very strict with calorie intake for the past few weeks, but yesterday she had a doughnut without really thinking about it, and then spent at least an hour sobbing about it in the bathroom near her work desk.

She still wasn't handling food well.

To be polite, she had a couple pieces of sashimi but without the soy sauce, instead drinking way to much sake and giggling too loudly at anything remotely funny Bruce said.

Which is why Tony was over there at her apartment the next morning, forgetting personal space.

"That's kind of big, coming from you," she retorted. "You drank more than me. You _always _drink more than me."

In any other past employment, that kind of sass would have had Darcy fired immediately, but instead Tony just rolled his eyes at her.

"Your apartment is awful. This is an awful neighbourhood..."

"And the point of your visit is?" Darcy paused. "Wait, how did you even get in?"

Tony didn't look at her.

"You picked my lock?! You picked my lock!"

Darcy lunged at Tony but hadn't really thought it through, so she was about to slap his arm when the sharp pain of her headache took over and she remembered her hangover.

"Ugh!"

Tony just watched her clutching her head as she slumped back into her pillows.

"You want a drink?"

Darcy opened an eye at Tony and gave him what she hoped was a withering look.

"It's ten in the morning."

"Hair of the dog?"

Admittedly it was appealing to Darcy since she ate so much last night and didn't want to think about her possible weight gain, and her scales were resting on the bathroom tiles just a few yards away.

"Sure."

After a couple of hours, they were both sprawled on the floor, Darcy's box of wine beside them. Somewhere amongst the time-lapsing fog of her binge-drinking, Darcy lifted her body just slightly so she was leaning back on her elbows, and she stared at Tony.

"Why are you even here?"

"Ouch," Tony retorted with mock hurt. "That really smarts."

"Seriously, Tony. Shouldn't you be spending today with Pepper?"

Darcy watched him frown and wave a dismissive hand. That wasn't a good sign. Neither was him bothering her on her only day off, just to drink even more than last night. But Tony liked to drink, everyone knew that. It still was weird that he was insisting on breaking into Darcy's apartment just so he wasn't drinking alone.

"She went back West. Something about fine-tuning an online commercial to get some more shareholders, I'm guessing."

Tony sounded thoroughly removed, and he took another gulp from his paper cup; Darcy didn't own any proper glassware. Everything was either plastic or recyclable since she was so clumsy and didn't trust herself making such an investment.

Instead of prying, Darcy just reached for the wine box and poured herself another drink. There wasn't much left, but that was probably a good thing. She should stop soon.

"Can we put on some music? I hate silences. JARVIS – oh," Tony remembered where he was after he looked up at the ceiling expectantly and there was no reply.

Darcy snorted and crawled over to her bed where her laptop lay dormant.

"Hold your horses, boss. I'll put something on."

She powered up her computer and waited for iTunes to load, before putting it on shuffle. She knew she didn't listen to anywhere near as much metal as Tony, but never mind. It was her apartment, so they were going to listen to _her_ music.

While she waited, Tony wandered over to her refrigerator without Darcy noticing. She turned back to see he wasn't lying on the floor, her head snapping back towards his voice as he complained.

"All you have is mustard. And pickles."

He sounded disgusted. Darcy felt her face grow hot. She was only eating pickles at home right now because she couldn't risk any other potential binges. She didn't like Tony just barging into her kitchen area, opening what he didn't see was her safe. Her refrigerator was close to her heart, though she knew he couldn't understand that. He didn't hate his body.

Darcy sprang towards him, and slammed the door closed, but Tony didn't seem to notice her urgency. By then he'd retrieved the jar of pickles, despite his initial reaction.

Watching Tony eat her food made her feel oddly okay. If he ate it, it meant less for her, which meant she'd lose weight even faster. She'd met her first goal weight but hit a plateau. She hated those more than anything.

"Come on, I'll put something good on. You can order pizza if you're so hungry."

Tony obliged, and they went back to her bedroom and resumed their lying on the floor, but this time Tony crawled over to Darcy and lay the back of his head on her stomach, and continued biting pickles in half and chewing loudly.

Darcy pulled her laptop down from her bed and pressed play. Given how loose she felt, and how comfortable they seemed together like this, she guessed Tony wouldn't mind her stroking his hair absently while they lay there together.

Well, she had her fingers sifting through his hair for a minute or so before she realised what she was doing, but Tony wasn't complaining.

_Is this the real life?  
Is this just fantasy?  
Caught in a landslide  
No escape from reality_

Normally Darcy would be too shy to sing in front of someone else, but since she was so elegantly wasted and Tony wasn't a really judgemental person, even with all his snarkiness intact, she sang along softly, but by the time they reached the Galileo's, Darcy and Tony were yelling at the top of their lungs, giggling.

They were very drunk.

When Freddie faded away, Darcy sighed, and felt Tony thread his fingers through hers. She looked down at him, and there was a flash of something like sadness or fear on his face, before being quickly replaced by a cheeky grin.

"I like the outfit, kiddo. You should wear this on Monday."

Darcy was wearing her pyjama bottoms with Hello Kitty's face dotted all over them; her tank top was fluoro green and tight across her chest. She suddenly felt embarrassed, not because of Tony's attention, but because she didn't feel right like this. She just wanted to look different much faster than the rate she was going. Her stomach never felt flat enough, no matter how little she ate, and it didn't matter how many sit-ups she did, either.

Darcy pursed her lips, looking away.

She must have looked miserable in that moment, because Tony sat up from his spot on the floor, squeezing her hand hard and gazing at her searchingly.

"Darcy, are you okay?"

She laughed a little at that, without humour. She gave a small, dark smile and finally looked at him straight on, and she knew her eyes must be shining because he suddenly looked so sad, too.

"If you're going to ask me that kind of thing, you at least have to tell me what's going on with Pepper. But I know you're not going to, so let's just pretend we're both okay and not ask questions, alright?"

Darcy nudged past him and got to her feet, looking back down at him.

"Okay, Tony?"

He nodded just slightly, and then reached over to empty his paper cup – and hers.

Darcy had a shower and re-emerged from the bathroom still feeling a little drunk, but much cleaner.

Tony was sitting on the edge of her bed and looked up.

"I think Pepper's going to break up with me."

Darcy dropped her towel she was using to dry her hair and walked over to Tony, and wrapped her arms around him, resting her chin on his shoulder.

She squeezed him, as if the touch would heal the sadness she could hear in his voice. He had never been like this before.

"It's okay," she babbled, nearing on desperate. She was pleading with him to perk up, to perk her up and keep her from further falling into this self-loathing that was building since she woke that morning.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay..."

Tony didn't really hug her back, not at first. But Darcy felt his hand on the small of her back and he returned the gesture, sighing.

Darcy drew back after a couple of minutes, concerned. "Is that why you came here?"

"I didn't...I-I didn't want to be alone," Tony said, swallowing tightly, jaw ticking. "And you're becoming kind of a big deal to me, so..."

"Kind of a big deal? Gee, thanks, Mr. Stark," Darcy said drolly, and Tony chuckled.

"Yeah, kind of."

"You didn't want to see Bruce instead?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "Weirdly, he tends to avoid people most days, so I couldn't find him. He wasn't in the Tower. He's probably off save sick orphans or something..."

"You sound disappointed in him."

"And you're not? A little human contact would do good for the guy," Tony said. "And you."

Darcy blushed. "Tony..."

"Look, I know what I saw last night. You kept giving him these bedroom eyes and he was either doing a really good job of ignoring you, or he really is that -"

"Disinterested," Darcy interjected bitterly.

"_Unobservant._"

Darcy moved away from Tony, scratching the back of her damp head and sighing. She should probably call her mother. She hadn't spoken to either of her parents for a week, and emails wouldn't be enough to satisfy her father's curiosity. She hadn't told them exactly who she was working for, just that she was an assistant and did a lot of filing, hence the use of the computer for communication.

Also, Darcy hated phone conversations because reactions were immediate, and her answers to prying questions had no delay.

_If you're worried about your parents judging you, you should be. They'll hate Tony. And they'll ask why you don't have a boyfriend. And you know why._

Darcy tried ignoring the voice but knew it was true. When her parents eventually find out Tony Stark was her boss, they'd freak, judging him on only what was said about him in the tabloids. They didn't know the real Tony, not the Tony Darcy knew.

Also, not having a boyfriend really sucked sometimes. Especially since her crush on Bruce was so pathetic and hopeless. There was no way he'd be attracted to her, ever. She was too dumb, and too fat. She just wasn't at all like Betty, she knew that. So really, why was Tony suggesting they get together if it was never going to happen.

"Tony, I..." Darcy hesitated. "I really like him. I mean, I really, really like Bruce but I know it's never going to happen, so I'd just rather try and forget about this conversation, forget about my feelings and just... move on. Grow."

"Grow?" Tony rose an eyebrow.

"Be... better," Darcy amended.

She didn't want to go into details about her plans to lose weight, buy nicer clothes and become a great person that she knew she had to become. Without changing herself there was no way she'd ever survive New York. She was too weak and had to become stronger or otherwise she didn't deserve this amazing opportunity Jane managed to get for her.

Tony just looked at her curiously.

"Sooner or later, you're gonna knock boots, that's all I'm saying. I will not hear the rest of this self preservation crap."

Darcy punched him in the arm for that.


End file.
